


Two Ghosts

by PhantomEngineer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2018-12-10 07:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11687217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomEngineer/pseuds/PhantomEngineer
Summary: Wars leave memories and unanswered questions. Harry has always believed in himself, has followed all possible leads to ease his ceaseless curiosity, even when everyone around him urged him not to. Maybe another person would think they saw someone on the street and simply dismiss it as an overactive imagination, but Harry has never really been quite like other people. Sometimes he jumps to conclusions only to be proved wrong, sometimes he discovers something important. Did he really see a ghost or something else?A series of short snapshots.(The Severus/Lily pairing is sort of by proxy, I may untag it I don't know)





	1. Chapter 1

Harry walked through the covered market, mentally checking off his shopping list. Leeds was bustling, full of students newly arrived for the term. First years excitedly exploring their boundaries and the initial flushes of young adulthood. It made him feel old and a little alone. Next year, he would be shopping for two as Lily joined her brothers at Hogwarts. The family home would return to being just him and Ginny, their children flying the nest. He felt a strange twinge of envy for the muggles around him, the muggle parents who had their children for longer. He had been so grateful to escape the Dursleys to Hogwarts at the tender age of 11, but now that he was parting with his own children all he could think was how young they were. How much of their formative years he and Ginny would miss out on.

He wondered if it was age and fatherhood that was altering his thinking, or maybe living in an anonymous muggle city. He liked Leeds, a simple yet friendly place. He even liked the students, in a way. Magic meant any rowdiness by student neighbours failed to penetrate their little house. Ginny had been confused initially at his desire to raise their children at least partially in the muggle world, but with her growing fame as an internationally recognised Quidditch player she had agreed that it was good for them. The wizarding world was small and insular, and Harry feared the impact of his fame on his children’s chances at living an almost normal life. They would never be normal, they would know about their history and Hogwarts would undoubtedly be a different experience for them than any other wizarding child, but giving them a humble grounding seemed sensible to him at least. He had not believed it possible, but watching Ginny’s careful dedication to learning to pass as a muggle had made him fall even more in love with her. He had come to realise that it was not easy for purebloods like her to adapt so easily, as seen by the way that Ron still struggled with relatively basic things at times.

Having bought the vegetables he needed with a smile and casual exchange of friendly greeting, he headed towards the fishmonger he had grown accustomed to buying from. The fishmonger flashed him a quick smile of recognition, before returning to his current customer. Harry smiled easily in response and gave a cursory glance at the wares on offer. He already knew what he wanted, so he let his gaze wander round the market stalls. Watching carefree muggles going about their grocery shopping was peaceful in a way. It served as a constant, soothing reminder of why he kept doing his job, and why he had faced Voldemort all those years ago.

Amongst the throng of people, a young man caught his eye, and everything else in the world seemed to fall out of focus. He was dressed all in black. Black boots, black jeans, black jacket. His hair was black, falling to his shoulders. He wasn’t looking at Harry, but Harry was certain even at the distance that his eyes were a deep, mysterious black. The face was younger than Harry had ever known it to be, but even unlined the underlying structure was the same. The same hooked nose, the same sharp cheekbones, the same set of his jaw. There was even a ghost of a frown playing over his features.

The fishmonger touched his arm, breaking his reverie. Harry looked at him in surprise.

“You alright?” the fishmonger asked, in his reassuringly warm voice, “You seemed to be away wit’ fairies there for a moment…”

Harry glanced back up to where he had seen the young man, but he was gone. Lost in the crowds, if he had ever been there to start with. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of all the thoughts that suddenly swirled and enthused his every sense. All the memories that clamoured for attention, clamoured for him to review and analyse them for every tiny detail he might have missed. Occlumency, the learning of which had been a hard won battle he never fully accomplished, helped keep the worst of the swirling chaos from overwhelming him.

“Sorry,” he said out loud to the fishmonger, a kindly chap wearing a concerned expression, “Thought I saw someone I used to know for a moment,”

The fishmonger nodded at this explanation, “Sorry for keeping you waiting, that lady couldn’t quite make up her mind what she wanted,”

Harry smiled vaguely, remembering a dark voice telling him to clear his mind. He tried, focusing on the fish in front of him, “Four fillets of mackerel please,” he said calmly. The transaction went smoothly, but Harry would have struggled to recount any of the details had he been quizzed on them. His mind was in the past, remembering a man who had played a crucial role in his life. In the same daze of memories he turned and walked home.

Hours later, the floo in the Potter house flared and Ginny stepped through with a cheerful yell of “I’m home!” She was looking forward to having a relaxing bath after what had proved to be a trying day. She loved her job, but she found some of the meetings to be the unpleasant combination of boring and stressful. She was grateful that it was Harry’s turn to cook and that therefore there was nothing more she needed to worry about for the rest of the day.

She heard a vague “Hi mum,” from the direction of Lily’s bedroom, though nothing more.

“…Harry?” she called out, questioning. She knew he was supposed to be home. The fact that Lily seemed to be home suggested he had picked her up from school. He had been intending to go shopping and make tea for them. She hoped he had done so, as she didn’t think she had the energy left if she had to do it herself.

Curiously, she walked up the stairs. She peered round the door of the small study off the landing, where the children weren’t allowed. It was here they kept important mementos, mostly from the war. The items that weren’t quite appropriate to have lying about, but that Harry in particular could never dream of parting with.

She sighed heavily, gazing at her husband. He was sitting at the desk, old photographs spread in front of him. The pensieve was out, and she could see he’d been watching old memories. The carefully fashioned goblet that bore the engraving _Severus Snape’s Memories_ was out and unstoppered, the silver tendrils swirling around in the pensieve. He met her eyes, an odd, haunted look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked in sudden concern that this was more than one of his regular, maudlin trips down memory lane, “You look as if you just saw a ghost…”

“I think I did,” he replied, his voice sounding tired and lost. He looked both far older than he should, yet at the same time the innocent confusion of the very young played across his slight frown.

She came into the study, all thoughts of her bath forgotten for the time being. She crouched by the chair, taking his hand and drawing it to her lips, “Harry…”

He looked into her soft brown eyes, full of love and worry.

“Who did you think you saw?” she asked gently, stroking his hand with her fingers.

“Snape…” he answered, gesturing to the photographs and pensieve. She glanced at them and noted that the photographs were almost entirely of Snape. They weren’t the ones showing the man she remembered from school, but rather the few photographs of him as a teenager and very young man. She had not entirely understood Harry’s need to collect those photographs, but she understood that it mattered to him to try to understand the man who’d been a constant enemy and protector so she’d quietly supported it while monitoring him carefully for worrying behaviour.

“Snape,” she repeated gently, her eyes returning to Harry.

“Yeah,” he said with a heavy sigh, “I could have sworn I saw him in the market…”

Ginny smiled almost indulgently and stroked his face, “You can’t have,” she said simply, “If he was going to come back as a ghost, it would have happened by now. And he’d have appeared at Hogwarts or the Shack, not Leeds market,”

Harry smiled ruefully, “I know,” he admitted, “I just can’t shake it. It just looked so much like him…”


	2. Chapter 2

It was late and Harry couldn’t sleep. As he grew older Halloween affected him more. Maybe it was getting the chance to live his life after the war, raising his children with Ginny, that made him think of all the many people who never got a chance to grow old. Even his parents, he knew now from this perspective, were so incredibly young when they had died. As a teenager they’d been adults to him, people he’d looked up to, forever out of reach. Older and wiser. But now he’d outlived them by enough that when he looked at their faces in photographs their youth pierced his heart. They were no older than the students he saw about the city centre, only the students were young and carefree with their whole lives ahead of them, while his parents’ lives had been stolen by a war that spread its dark influence through the generations. They weren’t the only ones, he knew. So many of their generation hadn’t lived to the age he was now, and his generation was littered with lives cut short as well.

Sometimes he regretted having become an Auror. It felt almost as if that was all he had ever known, the relentless battle against the dark. Ever since he’d entered the wizarding world, it had been a constant of his life. At times he envied his friends who had found peaceful jobs that suited them. He admired the way in which Ginny had made her love for Quidditch into a career. Watching her play had been a constant source of joy for him. Watching her forge a journalistic career out of her playing career had filled him with wonder. He had never been able to think of jobs, of life choices in the way she seemed to. He wondered if it could be in part because as a child he’d never truly had a choice. The Dursleys had never given him choices as a child, just orders. At Hogwarts he had a brief respite, but it wasn’t as if he had many choices. The ones he did vanished as soon as the spectre of Voldemort reared its ugly head. Had he always been reactive, backed into a corner, only able to choose between a few dire options? With Voldemort’s shadow always over him, growing in strength and influence his options always felt like fighting or dying. Maybe he could have run, but where to? How? It wasn’t truly a choice, rather a delay of the inevitable. Could he ever have escaped from Voldemort (would Dumbledore have let him, or would both sides be hunting him)? He’d have been found and left with the same choice - die or try to fight back.

And yet, at the same time, he felt compelled to continue. He had given so much of his life to fighting the dark. It may have sought him out initially, but he’d fought back. It was one thing he knew with absolute certainty he was good at. He was passionate and driven, even without the looming threat of Voldemort. Keeping the world safe for his children, ensuring that no more lives would be hopelessly torn to pieces by war, it was almost an obsession and Harry knew that even if he had a different job he would still be alert and watching. It was instinct by now, finely tuned into his very being. His curiosity and tendency towards wanting to investigate everything would have led him into conflict with the Aurors if he hadn’t been one himself. Maybe it was because he knew nothing else, had no other major experiences. The Dark owned him in a way, consumed him, despite him not being a Dark Wizard. 

Both Ginny and Lily were sound asleep and he didn’t want to disturb their slumber. Ginny knew that sometimes he needed to be alone with his thoughts. Halloween in particular brought out the need to contemplate. Quietly he left the house, locking it securely. The autumnal chill penetrated his thoughts, soothing them. Walking aimlessly towards the city centre, cutting through campus, he breathed in the cool night air. It wasn’t quiet or deserted, a consequence either of being a big city or the student population. The Parkinson Building was lit as always, the take-aways across the road cheerfully doing business as their neon lights spilled out onto the street. He could hear the music from the Quilted Llama echoing faintly even from outside, the coloured lights lighting the building up. He continued down Blenheim Terrace, past the laughter spilling out from Dry Dock towards the joyful chaos that was Woodhouse Lane.

Wandering silently amongst drunk students dressed up in all manner of costumes brought an almost smile to his face. He felt almost like a ghost, fitting in nicely with the vampires and superheroes stumbling over their own feet. He let his gaze drift over the students, walking between bars, on their way to clubs and discussing take-away options. There was something glorious about students, the way that they were in that strange phase of metamorphosis between the innocence of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood. They were young, excited and finding themselves. Exploring their boundaries, forging new relationships and identities. Harry had been younger than them when he faced Voldemort for the final time, freeing the wizarding world (and by association, the muggle world too) from that dark shadow. He wondered if he’d ever been as young as these young adults, free from the crushing expectations that had ruled his teenage years. They were free from anything more complicated that showing up for class and handing in work, maybe the occasional part-time job and worries about money, though even that was a problem more common for later in the year. They were free from the rules of their parents, free from the strictness of schools, free to stay out as late as they wished and suffer the consequences of their hangovers then next day (in class or in bed). Harry loved the sense of life they had, even though sometimes their mere existence filled him with a strange envy for their lives.

The costume should have made him unrecognisable, but to Harry it just seemed to hammer home the uncanny resemblance. The young man he thought he’d seen in the market, an exact replica of a young Severus Snape, was there in the flesh. Real, not a figment of his imagination or even a ghost. His hair was curled, framing his face in an almost glamorous manner. Between his elegant eyebrows and thickly lined eyes was extravagant, dark eyeshadow. His lips were a bold red, clearly lined. It was not a look Harry had ever considered in connection with the Severus Snape he had known, either the man who had taught him or the young man who seemed both an old friend and an unsolvable mystery. He had a ring of cheap-looking pearls around his neck, resting on the black, laced corset. Fingerless black gloves, skimpy black sequinned hot pants and ripped fishnet suspenders seemed to complete the whole costume, and Harry was somewhat impressed with the confidence (and presumably alcohol) required for him to be out in public in so little. 

Harry stood still and stared, his mind flooded with questions. The young man was oblivious, clearly no longer entirely sober and surrounded by equally tipsy friends. His focus appeared to be on a red-haired Wonder Woman in their group, in a red bustier and the shortest denim mini-skirt he had ever seen. Her costume was equally impressive, with her diadem, arm guards and thick belt all fitting her beautifully. She seemed just as unconcerned as him at the idea of being out in public in something that revealed such a large amount of her flesh, but Harry knew that in many ways it was not significantly less than many of the other students around, his attention was merely focused like a laser on the young Severus, and she was caught up in Harry’s attention by being beside him. The two of them appearing to be deep in some kind of slightly bizarre drunk conversation judging by the gestures and the way the young man seemed to be laughing. Her back was to Harry, but he could see that her focus, like his, was on the dark-haired young man. He’d never seen Severus Snape laugh. He had no memory of anything like that at school, and none of the memories he’d received and preserved had featured laughter. There was something sad in that, the realisation that virtually all he knew of the man was so serious and full of suffering. Even the photographs he’d collected only showed the occasional smiles, and those were only the few young ones of Severus with Lily, while they were still friends. 

Harry allowed himself to fade into the shadows of the street as the group meandered chaotically past him, likely heading for a club. They went in the direction of Queen’s Square, jostling good-naturedly. He vaguely noted an Iron Man made mostly of cardboard, a faintly underwhelming vampire whose costume seemed to hinge on some cheap fake fangs and a few dribbles of fake blood and a unicorn in a onesie, but they failed to capture his attention in the same way. Their faces were just the faces of strangers, ordinary students whose existence simply washed over him like the scenery of the city. He didn’t know how long he stood there, frozen in place as he stared at nothing, his mind full of images of the past. No one paid him any attention, half hidden in the shadows. The mostly drunk students meandering about had no interest in his trip down memory lane, they were as caught up in their immediate present as Harry was trapped by the past.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which something almost happens, for once.

Time passed, sweeping by with no concern for the way it affected everything. The year advanced, the seasons changing until it was nearly summer and the weather was getting hotter. It wouldn't be long now until James and Albus returned for the summer, no doubt full of stories and wonder from Hogwarts. Harry knew with a heavy certainty that the summer would fly by, vanishing in the blink of an eye and with autumn Lily would leave on the train with his sons, eager for adventure and the future ahead of her. 

Ginny was covering a Quidditch story, so Harry was making the most of the good weekend weather by taking Lily to the park. He wasn't the only one. Parents and children filled the playground area and spilled over to playing all manner of ball games on the open spaces. A number of teenage boys were boisterously throwing a frisbee around. Students picnicked on the grass, celebrating the end of term and their exams. A few ice cream vendors were doing a good business. He'd given Lily a couple of pounds to buy herself an ice cream, as he waited on a bench.

He cast his eyes over the students, curious. He'd caught a glimpse of the young man that looked like a young Severus Snape once in Morrisons, in the process of picking up an own brand bottle of spirit but heading off to the tills before Harry could react, and once sitting on the steps by the Parkinson Building playing with his mobile phone as Harry had been on the other side of the road. It was still a mystery that felt like it was haunting him. He looked more closely at students as they passed him now, wondering if he'd see either him or possibly even someone else he recognised. He wasn’t telling Ginny, or anyone else. He was half afraid he was going mad, though if anyone had a right to go mad after all he’d been though it would be him. At the same time, he was afraid they would think he was mad, that he was seeing things. He could still remember the way it felt, to be disbelieved. He’d been wrong plenty of times, it was true. But half of the reason he’d clung on to his suspicions and gone hunting for the truth was the way other people had dismissed his concerns. 

Sitting amongst a group of students, Harry saw him again. He was wearing all black again, though Harry could hardly imagine him in any other colour. Black hair down to his shoulders, black t-shirt and distressed black jeans, he sat casually with a young woman of the same age between his legs, leaning laconically against his chest. She had vivid red hair down to her breasts and, from the brief glance Harry caught, a face full of freckles. Unlike him, she was full of colour. She was wearing plain, pale blue jeans and a bold green t-shirt, that seemed to have a pattern of leaves swirling on it. Neither of them were looking in Harry's direction. Their focus seemed to be on the ice cream cone in his hand, which they appeared to be sharing. They'd almost finished it, and as far as Harry could tell she seemed to be indicating that he could have the last few bites of the cone.

Harry was so lost in his thoughts as he looked at the two of them that he didn't fully register that Lily was walking past the picnicking group. He also didn't immediately notice when a frisbee throwing lad barged into his daughter, knocking her and her ice cream to the ground. What Harry first noticed was the young Severus (as Harry has started to think of him) and his presumed girlfriend jumping to their feet as Lily almost fell on top of them.

Harry reacted, jumping up and heading towards his daughter. By the time he'd made it across the lawn, hindered by the range of people milling about in casual enjoyment of the day, a state that moments before had given him pleasure but now that they were between him and his daughter caused nothing but intense frustration, the boy and his frisbee had already skulked off, having been given an earful by the red-haired girl. He appeared to have apologised to Lily, which Harry suspected may have been at the red-head's insistence.

The young Severus was crouched by Lily, who was struggling not to cry. He was clearly comforting her, judging by the gentle way in which he was stroking her back and speaking quietly to her. There was something about that that amused Harry, had he stopped to think of it. The Snape he'd known was far more connected in his mind to telling off rambunctious teenagers than comforting young children, but this young man had gently put his arm around his daughter in a manner that suggested he was perfectly at ease. 

Harry arrived before them just as the young woman was crouching down to join his daughter and the young Severus, seeming far more awkward and uncertain as to how to handle young children than the young man obviously was. 

"Hey now, we'll get you a new ice cream," he heard her say in a voice that seemed familiar, though he couldn't quite put his finger on why. It was a Scottish accent, which added to his initial certainty that it must be a false positive, until she seemed to sense his presence behind her and turned to face him. To his surprise, he found himself staring into emerald green eyes identical to his own.

Now that he saw it full on, the whole face was familiar, from the dark red hair to the freckles. He'd studied her face many times throughout his life, mostly going back to the photograph of his parents at their wedding. Her hair style was different, and this young woman was in casual clothing but the face, even down to the smile, was the same.

"Hi," she said in surprise, obviously realising that he was Lily's father, and Harry recognised the tone as being similar to the one he'd heard from his mother Lily in Snape's teenage memories. The one word resonated through his being, echoing in his mind and causing chaos with his emotions. 

He tried to pull himself together, to not freeze and stare blankly at the poor young woman. He didn't feel that he managed very well, but a memory of Snape's voice echoing through his thoughts, commanding him to clear his mind helped. He wondered what the man would think, if he knew that after all the failed and disastrous attempts to teach him Occlumency, it was ultimately Snape’s instructions that had stuck with him the most, and his voice that instructed him in the art even now. It would never be a skill that Harry felt particularly suited him, and as he aged he found that the consideration of it and his own short-comings with Occlumency made him admire how adept Severus Snape had been at the art, gifted enough to fool the Dark Lord with such practised ease for so many years.

He looked away from her, though it hurt him somewhere deep inside to tear his gaze from her confused green eyes. He focused instead on his daughter Lily, and the young man with her. Up close, he has expected that he would see all the differences between this man and the young Severus Snape, and he’d been torn between wanting to see him close to break the spell and wanting to keep this illusion going for as long as possible, but now looking straight at him the few differences were so superficial that they merely highlighted the fact that the two were identical.

Unlike the young Severus Harry had seen, this one had clean hair though the style and length were eerily identical. More dramatically, he had a number of piercings, with not only his ears having a selection of gothic earrings, but there was a simple silver ring through his lower lip and two in his right eyebrow. Even those could not distract or change the fact that there was no difference between the two, despite all common sense denying the possibility.

The young Severus looked hesitant at Harry's stare, drawing almost horridly away from Lily who sniffed slightly at the loss of contact. He said almost apologetically, "A boy knocked into her, we were just trying to help,"

For some reason, Harry was vaguely pleased to note in the back of his mind that the young man’s accent was the same as the red-headed girl, his mother, Lily. Aside from that, the tone had the same silky quality that he remembered not just from far too many hours reviewing memories in the pensieve but also from his formative years in Potions class. He could tell, that just as the teenage Severus Snape had grown into the formidably seductive voice that taught him first the beauty of potions and later that of mind magic and the Dark Arts, this man would mature into that enchanting timbre.

"Yes," Harry replied, almost breathless and struggling to act normal, "I saw,"

He was aware that his reactions and responses were off, that he was undoubtably appearing to be somewhat strange to the two. Even Lily was giving his a confused look. Whatever the young Severus had said to her had cheered her up as she didn't seem to be too upset over the fall or the loss of her ice cream anymore, now her focus seemed to be more the confusion of her father’s slightly odd behaviour. 

"Thank you," Harry continued, trying to keep his thoughts at bay as he took Lily’s hand. She smiled up at him, her tears dry, but Harry was struggling to know what to focus on. It was taking all his concentration to act vaguely normal. 

"We were going to buy her a replacement," his young mother who couldn’t possibly be his mother said uncertainly. The breeze played with her dark red hair as the young man who couldn’t possibly be Severus Snape stood up besides her, his worried eyes darting from Lily to Harry. 

"No, no, it's fine," Harry replied on autopilot, "I'll get her one, you've been too kind. Thank you,"

With Lily in tow, he headed vaguely in the direction of the parked ice-cream van. She turned as they went, and gave a slight wave to the young couple.

It was only later that Harry cursed his lack of clear thinking. He could have spoken to them for longer, found out enough about them to meet them again, or even asked their names. He had had a perfect opportunity but the unexpected shock had wiped all coherent thoughts from his mind.


	4. Chapter 4

Summer arrived, bring with it the return of James and Albus, full of chaotic and enthusiastic tales of their year at Hogwarts. Harry delighted in their return, as he felt a deep sorrow. Summer would fly by, as it did every year, and they would return to their adventures in the corridors that he for so long had called home, taking Lily with them. He would miss them, miss their presence, so full of life, in the house. He missed his own time at Hogwarts, wondering once again why he hadn’t returned to complete his final year. The magic had been broken, perhaps. He wondered sometimes how many of his childhood memories, that he had looked upon with joy, were truly innocent and happy. So much of his life had been overshadowed by Voldemort and the war.

He felt adrift now, his children growing up and growing away from him in directions he couldn’t understand. Becoming teenagers, making him wonder when he had become old enough to have teenage children. Before he knew it, he realised, he would have adult children. When he thought too much, he threw himself into his work. It earned him accolades, accolades he felt reassured he deserved. They weren’t just because he was the boy-who-lived, but because of hard work. His talent, his ability, his persistence. His desperate need to keep the world safe. His children made him feel helpless, he felt unable to protect them, even though there were no explicit threats to protect them from. Just a product of his mind, still used to seeing enemies in everything, still used to distrust.

There was a satisfaction in the acknowledgement of his work, though it didn’t make up for the lingering resentment from his teenage years. He felt easier with every promotion, despite the longer hours and greater responsibility, Hadn’t he always been shouldering the greatest responsibility, long before it was his due? Paperwork, just like homework and detailed research, was a burden he wished he could pass on to someone else. It was a distraction from his burning need to protect the world. It was a distraction from his burning need to find answers to the darkness that threatened.

He dreaded the emptiness of the house once Lily went off to Hogwarts. At the same time, he felt a strange envy. It seemed like only yesterday that it had been him, boarding the Hogwarts Express heading towards a magical castle. Where had the time gone? Sometimes he wished he could live his whole life over, maybe make some different decisions. That way lay regret though, regrets and despair he struggled to block from his mind. Some days, in private, he mourned for the life he’d never had. The life he could have had, had he not been marked out by Voldemort. The life he could have had with his parents had he not been chosen. Even the life he could have had without them, had Voldemort truly been ended that fateful Halloween night.

Trying to shake these thoughts from his mind, he walked down the pathway to the wheelie bin, a mundane task to keep him grounded. Ginny and the children were in the back garden, enclosed by trees and a few carefully cast warding spells. James was playing a game of catch with his mother, Albus was reading in the shade of the small magnolia tree and Lily was painting her nails. Even from the front of the house he could hear the faint sounds of their voices drifting over him, washing him clean of his melancholic thoughts.

The front garden was small, a simple yard leading to the house, with space for the bins. He added the garden waste to the one for excess compostables, half amused that after a childhood of being forced to tend to Aunt Petunia’s flower garden he now willingly tended to their own, slightly more wild, garden. There was something about pruning trees and hedges, and even growing an assortment of vegetables, that was soothing. Their house was slightly off-set from the road, with a sizeable garden. From the outside it looked like any other house, the old bricks giving away no secrets. Inside there had been a number of magical alterations, but it was still a sturdy and comfortable house. 

The house next door, smaller and slightly off-set from the Potter’s house, had its front door propped open and a blue car parked outside of it with a middle-aged man removing a cardboard box from the back seat. Harry paused, leaning slightly against the wall that marked the boundary between his yard and theirs. Students, he reasoned, it was likely a parent of a student moving in to the house. Idly, he watched with interest, wondering what the new neighbours would be like. Silencing charms, amongst other little additions to the once muggle house, meant that it didn’t really affect them too much who lived next door.

Out from the front door bounced a young woman, her red hair scooped back into a high and messy ponytail. 

“That the last of it?” She asked, taking the cardboard box from the man’s hands, as Harry froze. It was the girl from the park, he realised. The girl who looked every bit like his mother once had, whose voice disguised under the Scottish accent even had the same tone to it. The girl who had been wrapped in the arms of the boy who looked to be a young Severus Snape.

“Yes, just this,” the man said, his voice also carrying a Scottish lilt. Unlike her, he had black hair. His skin was darker too, a faint tanned quality in comparison to her paleness. Distracted, Harry almost failed to notice another figure emerging from the door, until the dark figure of the young man from the park who seemed to be haunting his thoughts registered as taking the box from the red haired girl.

In that moment, it occurred to Harry that the man was the boy’s father, not the girl’s. It made sense, he thought vaguely, there was a resemblance. It was only logical, that these two people had parents like any other, he realised. While they may have appeared into his life seemingly out of nowhere, vague figures haunting his consciousness, they existed. They could not have blossomed into being out of thin air, not without the Ministry surely noticing some intense magic and Harry would definitely have heard of it in that case. They, like any other human being, had undoubtably been born. They had grown up. And now, it would seem, they were about to live right next door to him.

“Oh hi,” the red-haired girl said, her voice bubbling full of cheerful surprise as she noticed him leaning on the wall, and he saw a flash of recognition in her green eyes, eyes identical to his own, “We’ve met before, right? In the park?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, unable to bring up what else he recognised her from. It was painfully clear that she didn’t seem to be aware of anything else.

“Was your little girl alright?” she asked, as Harry thought how strange it was, for her to be asking after the girl named for her, as it occurred to him that he didn’t know if this woman was really called Lily as well.

“Yes, just a little shaken, nothing more,” he answered, “I see you’ll be our new neighbours,”

“Yes, there’ll be five of us in total. Me and Alasdair and three others,” the young woman answered, gesturing towards the silent young man that Harry now knew was called Alasdair, “I’m Morag by the way,”

“I’m Harry,” Harry introduced himself, “I hope you like the neighbourhood, it’s definitely convenient for campus and the town centre,”

“They won’t be any trouble,” the man who was presumably Alasdair’s father cut in, giving the young couple what could only be described as a paternal glance, “Right?”

“Of course we won’t!” Alasdair exclaimed almost indignantly, before giving a slightly self-deprecating laugh and admitting, “I won’t be any trouble at least,”

Harry couldn’t really imagine the Severus Snape he knew having wild house parties, but then again he couldn’t exactly imagine the Severus Snape he’d known laughing. It was surreal, the way in which in so many ways Alasdair was physically identical to the man he’d known, the same mannerisms, voice, appearance. From what little he could see there was something of the same personality but there were also differences. Yet even those seemed in character, as if the two men had started with the same basic personality and every little detail of their lives had led them down different paths. Or maybe Harry was just seeing what he wanted to see. No matter what, with Alasdair and Morag living next door he had a good chance to observe them, to puzzle out all the questions that tormented him. He could even talk to them, maybe even go as far as to probe their minds with Legimancy if need be. He justified it to himself as almost his duty as an Auror, though not something he would be mentioning to his department. He might tell Ginny, though that was mainly because with them next door it would be the most normal and reasonable course of action. He didn’t think he would mention it to even Ron or Hermione. Hermione had a lot on her plate now, and he didn’t want to ask Ron to keep a secret from her. It would only cause trouble and arguments, worry his friends and interfere with his attempts to discover more about Alasdair and Morag. 

“We’ve never been bothered by students before,” Harry reassured the three of them, not mentioning that the Potter’s house was saturated in spellwork, “It’ll be nice to know my neighbours, you’ll have to come round for tea some time,”

The young students laughed, slightly awkwardly. It was maybe a bit of an over-eager invitation, but Harry meant it sincerely. He wanted to know them better, to observe them and to bask in their seemingly innocent presence. The idea of them living next door but never again interacting with him caused an almost desperate grief, as if he was losing something, just as he’d felt when the portrait of Severus Snape he’d fought so hard to be placed in the Headmaster’s office had never woken. No one had quite known why it was, assuming first of all that it was a matter of waiting, but now after nearly a decade of the picture staying nothing more than a still painting no one expected it to move. Some had theorised it was because he’d abandoned his post of Headmaster, though Harry had disputed that as he strongly believed that Snape had in many ways been fulfilling his job when he flew to Voldemort, not only as a spy working to bring Voldemort down but also as Headmaster protecting the school and student body. As it was, it had served to be a source of painful grief. Harry had not realised quite how much he had needed to talk to even a shadow of the man to absolve himself of his conflicted feelings, and the knowledge that he never would be able to had caused an outpouring of devastation that had taken him by surprised. Now he clung on to a feeble hope that somehow he might still be able to lay some of it to rest in the form of these two apparently normal muggle students.

“We’re just moving in today,” Morag said, smiling in a friendly fashion, “Then Iain’s driving us back up to Dunblane after lunch. We’ll be back in time for term so maybe we’ll see you then. You might spot Becky or Chris moving in, I think they’re still yet to do so,”

“I’ve been promised some Moroccan food or something from a cafe near here,” the man who Harry assumed was Iain commented cheerfully, “So if we want to get back home in a reasonable time we should make tracks…”

“Enjoy your meal and safe trip home,” Harry said reluctantly as they left, “See you in term time,” he added, hoping that he would, hoping that they weren’t walking away from him forever.

He watched them walking down the road, noting the casual way in which Alasdair slung his arm around Morag’s shoulder, and the way in which she leaned in to him affectionately. It would be an interesting year.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry had placed a subtle monitoring spell on the front door of the house next door that Alasdair and Morag were due to live in come term time. It was technically illegal and morally dubious, but Harry had justified it to himself. He hadn’t justified it to anyone else as he had sensibly kept it a secret. He imagined it was unlikely that anyone would notice, and if they did it was unlikely that it would be mentioned. There were some perks to being the Head Auror as well as the boy-who-lived. Besides, he reasoned, those were perfectly good reasons why he might want to be careful of the area surrounding his house. Anyone would agree that given his life and career thus far it would make sense for him to be a little paranoid. What was actually paranoid in his actions was the way in which he was carefully hiding anything he knew of Alasdair and Morag from everyone. Ginny he would have to casually mention it to, ideally once he had managed to engineer another meeting with them and have them round for tea. But no one else.

So he kept the spell up, monitoring. There had been a few false alarms, when it had alerted him and he’d rushed to look out the window only for it to be one of the other students. He had no interest in them. Even from a distance it was clear that they bore no resemblance to anyone from his past. He was tempted to probe them for more information about Alasdair and Morag, but he was older and wiser than he had once been. He was patient. He knew that he would get greater results from a more subtle approach. So he was waiting, frustrated and impatient, for the two of them to move in so he could coincidentally meet them on the street in front of the house and invite them in. Maybe he was acting like a stalker or even a serial killer, but he didn’t care. He meant them no harm. He just needed, desperately needed, to know more about them. Seeing them, alive and so familiar, knowing they existed, that was a soothing balm on the wounds of his soul. It also filled him with a burning curiosity, a curiosity that he had missed. He solved mysteries professionally, of course. It was his job. But it was also his passion, and the day to day running of the Auror department, the minor irritations of criminals, somehow weren’t as interesting. He had been poking his nose into places it didn’t belong for about as long as he could remember. There was still something odd about being paid to poke his nose into other people’s business, no longer doing it simply as a matter of course but actually being employed to do so. Somehow that was less exciting. He was still driven to investigate, preferring to do things alone, struggling with bureaucracy.

Waving goodbye to all his children with Ginny as they boarded the Hogwarts Express had been a melancholic affair. He knew they were heading into a world of magic that had so enchanted him at their ages. But it left the house feeling empty. It was lucky that the spark and the affection between him and Ginny was as strong as ever. It was something they rarely spoke of, but their shared experience of youthful encounters with Voldemort played a role. There were quite possibly no other people who could say that they’d had Voldemort literally inside their mind, especially not so young.

His determination paid off, eventually. The spell triggered, and he saw to his delight that the young couple were back in Leeds. He watched them carefully, grateful that Ginny was distracted by the Quidditch season. He knew she would worry about him if she noticed, so he took pains to make sure she wasn’t aware of anything more than him being distracted and overly lost in his thoughts. He appreciated her gentle affection late at night, holding him in the present. For the students next door needed a perfect moment and eventually he found one. It felt like an eternity to him, but he knew it was only a handful of days really. As they walked back towards their house, Harry called out to them, as if he had coincidentally been in the yard in front of his house, rather than surreptitiously skulking there under an invisibility spell from the moment they’d headed out, waiting for their return home.

“Hello there,” he said cheerfully, “Settling in nicely?”

They both smiled in a friendly, open fashion, leaning against his wall. He had always loved the gentle way his mother had smiled in the photographs he had of her, she seemed to exude a warm kindness. Morag smiled in the same way, as if the clouds had split open and the sun was shining down in all its radiant glory. Snape he had never really seen smile, he couldn’t even quite imagine it, but Alasdair for all his gothic fashion sense had a pleasant smile. It was almost shy, a little self-conscious and crooked but at the same time held a calm sense of self. Harry found that he liked Alasdair’s smile a lot, just as much as he liked Morag’s. Her’s reminded him fondly, if a little bittersweet, of his mother’s great love. His gave him a hopeful vision of some alternative reality, a different life, where Severus Snape had lived a happy life.

“Hello,” Morag said, leading the conversation as Harry had realised was common. Was it just him or had that not been similar between the young Severus and Lily, when they were childhood friends? He couldn’t really know for sure, and even his views were liable to bias. All he knew of them were from the memories he had received and he had no way of being certain how typical they were for the relationship between the two. He had no way of ever knowing why Snape had, in his dying moments, chosen those exact memories to give him. He assumed Snape had chosen them, but even that he didn’t know. He had tried to read books about Occlumency, Legimancy, Pensieves, all sorts of mind magics but they had all been fiendishly difficult and none of them had seemed to hold the answers he was looking for. 

“It’s a decent house,” she continued, still smiling easily.

“Convenient,” Alasdair added. Harry wondered if it was just his imagination or had Alasdair always had two lip piercings? He had thought it was just the one, but he could easily be wrong. Now there was a dark ring on each side of his lower lip, reminding Harry somewhat of a snake’s fangs. Remembering the way Nagini had struck Snape in the Shrieking Shack, tearing his throat out, made him shiver slightly. He doubted he would ever forget that moment. He had seen a lot of death, far too much, but that one stayed with him far more than the rest. Maybe in part it was because Snape had been someone he’d known for such a long time. His relationship with Dumbledore had, on the face of it, been much more affectionate, but his relationship with Snape had been deeper in a way. It had been a bloodier death than most that he’d witnesses, clearly painful but even then Snape had focused on carrying out his mission. At least Dumbledore’s death had been quick and presumably painless. He knew now that it had served a purpose, both putting the old wizard out of his misery and cementing Snape’s position in a way that ultimately led to Voldemort’s defeat. But Snape’s death had served no purpose. Even the wand that Voldemort sought to claim ownership of hadn’t even recognised Snape as it’s owner. He had died a futile, painful, lonely death. Even though Harry had been there with him, he still felt that it had been lonely. 

“Yes, it is,” Harry said, happy to hear their voices. They were distorted somewhat by the strong Scottish lilt, but the tones and intonation still sounded like the voices he had listened to over and over again in his Pensieve. He would now be able to add these new memories to his Pensieve, to listen over and over again to the mundane sentences and glory in their existence. 

“Close to town and campus, near the park, it’s a good area,” he continued, glad that he and Ginny had chosen that house to live in, not so much for the surroundings but for the coincidence that had meant the two students who seemed to be ghosts from his past had moved in next door. 

“It is,” Alasdair agreed, “Quiet too,” suggesting that he probably wasn’t a wild party animal. It was relatively quiet, for all that there were a good number of students living in the houses nearby. There would be the occasional house party, but even those managed to be mostly relatively conscientious and any antisocial activity was kept to a minimum. It was one of the nice things about the city in general, the way that the permanent population and the temporary student population lived side by side, existing in the same space.

“You should come round this weekend for a cup of tea and some cake,” Harry offered, “It’d be lovely to get to know my neighbours a little bit and some tea and cake is really the least I can do for your kindness to Lily,”

He mentioned Lily’s name deliberately, as he finally managed to make his invitation. He didn’t know what he would do if they refused, but he knew that it would be hard for them if he pressed them with a time and date. He watched closely as well for any reaction to the name of Lily, any hint that would connect it in some way to Morag or Alasdair, and hint that it was a name that meant something to either of them. To both his mother and his teacher it had had a significant meaning, but there was nothing, just a slightly shy shuffling and grinning in response to his suggestion.

“I… We wouldn’t want to impose,” Morag said hesitantly, “It’s really very kind of you though,”

“Not at all,” Harry said, smiling and trying his best to appear utterly harmless and unthreatening, something that was contrary to reality and his job description, “It would be my pleasure, please. Are you free Saturday afternoon?”

They nodded, sharing a glance with each other. There was something in the way they looked at each other, the way that the slight twitch of Alasdair’s eyebrow seemed to have meaning to Morag, which implied they had known each other a long time. Had they grown up together, as childhood friends, just like his mother and Snape had, he wondered, thinking almost affectionately of the two children innocently playing in Cokeworth decades ago, unaware of the future that awaited them.

“Say, 2pm?” he suggested, gaining some more nods of affirmation.

“OK,” Alasdair said, seeming somewhat uncertain by Harry’s determined hospitality, “We can pop round for a bit then, if you insist,”

“Great,” Harry enthused, restraining himself as best he could from celebrating visibly, “I’ll look forward to seeing you then,”

They smiled, still uncertain at his friendliness, but willing to try visiting his house at the weekend. He let them go, allowing the brief conversation to finish now that he had what he wanted, feeling no need to keep them outside clutching their bags full of books. Clearly they had come from campus, presumably the library or class, maybe a combination of both. Thinking of them combined with books made him nostalgic for Snape’s old Advanced Potions book, with all the scrawling notes that covered it. He would have to get it out later and reread those comments again. 

He watched them walk up to their front door, unlocking it and entering. He continued for a while to potter about in the yard, cleaning it in a vague pretence that he had been doing so when they happened to come home, before also returning to the warmth of the indoors, both eagerly impatient and horrifically nervous for Saturday.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time the day in question had arrived, Harry had told Ginny. He hadn’t told her the whole truth, about the spell to monitor the house next door, or the effort he had put into drawing the young couple into their home, merely that he had encountered them by chance. He had recounted the story of Lily in the park to her. He hadn’t been able to hide his burning curiosity and confusion about them from her, and had he been able he had no doubt that she would have been suspicious at his lack of reaction. She had been concerned for him, but curious herself. While she had little connection to his mother, she had been a student while Snape had been Headmaster, an era that had been fraught with danger. She had spent a long time picking over the events of that year with Neville and Luna, trying to remember all the details now that they could see all of his actions from another point of view, one that explained so much more than they had initially realised.

Harry was nervous, and he knew that Ginny could tell by the way she calmly went about her daily routine yet still managed to find time to rest her hand on his shoulder, stroke his hair and kiss his cheek as she passed by. She kept the house bright with her cheerful energy, buoying his apocalyptic mood of euphoric doom. He hoped the young couple would come round at the promised time. From all he had known of Severus Snape and his mother, they both seemed to him to have been people that were true to their word. He had no idea if he was correct in that assumption and even less certain that he could apply it to the two next door.

As it was, the doorbell rang at exactly 2pm. Ginny was the one to open the door, and he could tell from the tones echoing through the hallway that they had were being welcomed by her warm smile. Harry was simultaneously elated and fearful, a nervous energy penetrating his being. He knew that in many ways the idea of him, who had faced Voldemort, being afraid was ridiculous, but there were things other than mortal danger that frightened him now. It was a fear that was hard to put into words, even within the confines of his own mind, let alone to express out loud. It was a fear of what he might find, and a fear of what he might not. A fear of disappointment and a fear of discovering something, anything.

There was something unbelievably surreal of seeing the two young adults, the spitting image of what his mother and Potions teacher could have been, sitting on his living room sofa. They were awkward, which Harry could understand. For all that that they occupied and haunted his thoughts, to them he was presumably a complete stranger, just a man who had almost forcefully persuaded them into his house. The alternative, that they were in some way actually his mother and teacher, with all their memories, seemed less likely. Maybe had it just been Severus Snape on his own, as he had proved himself to be an excellent actor in his long role as a spy, but he saw no reason why his mother would do the same. Maybe when he was younger he might have considered the possibility that Snape knew and was hiding everything from his mother, holding her in his evil grasp, but he had matured enough to have absolute faith that that was not the case. 

“We brought some gingerbread biscuits,” Morag said with a slightly awkward smile, “Alasdair made them,” 

It looked like she had dressed up a little, nothing flashy but at the same time slightly more formal than just jeans and a T-shirt. It could have been coincidence or it could have been because they were coming round to the Potters’ house, it made no difference to Harry. Alasdair was wearing all black, which didn’t surprise Harry in the slightest.

“Thank you,” Harry said, as Morag opened the tin to show the biscuits. It appeared that the only biscuit cutter that they owned was fish shaped, which was not particularly gingerbread-esque, though they tasted good regardless. 

“Tea?” Ginny offered to a room of nods, “I’ve just put the kettle on. How do you take it?”

As Alasdair and Morag murmured their preference for just with a bit of milk, she shared a look with Harry, and he felt a wave of relief wash over him, calming a tension he hadn’t realised was wound inside him. She could clearly see the resemblance between the couple on their sofa and the old pictures stored in the small study upstairs.

“So,” Harry started, suddenly unsure what he wanted to talk about, a vast sea of unknowns stretching out before him, but aware that he had to start somewhere, “You’re students at the uni?”

They both nodded, with Morag answering, “Yeah,”

Harry wondered if Snape had ever felt this frustration, when he had been spying for Dumbledore. Constantly talking to Death Eaters and even Voldemort, knowing he had to twist information out of them yet unable to directly ask anything. It was not an ability that came particularly naturally to Harry, though he liked to think he had improved since he had been a child. He knew there was a fine line between asking the questions he wanted to and being able to have future chances to ask more questions, so he had to be delicate. It took a lot of thought. 

“Second years now,” Alasdair added, smiling gratefully as he took a cup of tea from Ginny. After handing round warm cups of tea, she too took a seat in one of the rich red armchairs that surrounded the low coffee table.

“What do you study?” she asked, her tone carefree and welcoming, as homely as the tea she’d made.

“Linguistics,” Morag said, her green eyes sparkling with a repressed enthusiasm. Harry smiled, happy to see her delight with her subject, happy to see such emotions playing across the face that both was and wasn’t his mother’s.

“Neuroscience,” Alasdair said almost bashfully and it took Harry a moment to guess what it was. He wasn’t familiar with muggle subjects, and he didn’t particularly want to admit that he had never heard of linguistics, but his rudimentary knowledge was enough that he could guess for neuroscience. He would ask Hermione later, or maybe see if he could remember how the internet worked. It might be safer to call Dudley, as he was still confused about how to even turn the computer on. Somehow, it seemed almost fitting that what seemed like a version of the man who had attempted to teach him Occlumency was studying something to do with brains in the muggle world.

“That sounds very clever,” Ginny admitted, and Harry realised that she was probably even more lost than he was with regards to muggle subjects.

“They’re all a bit like zombies,” Morag said unhelpfully, as she had no way of knowing how ignorant her audience was.

Alasdair gave her a slightly incredulous look, so she clarified, “You know, stand around going ‘brainzzz…’”

Harry laughed slightly and Ginny smiled, recognising the cue for amusement even if she didn’t quite understand why. Alasdair pursed his lips slightly, giving one of his lip rings a slight chew.

“…Thank you…” he said, and Harry realised he had missed that sardonic tone of voice. It was considerably more funny when it was directed towards someone other than him. Morag grinned affectionately at Alasdair, and Harry realised he too was hiding a smile as he lifted his tea cup to his lips, for all the spiky sarcasm.

“So do you just have the one daughter?” Morag asked, switching the subject from them to the Potters, to Harry’s slight disappointment. He liked his children, but they weren’t a mystery for him to solve. 

“One daughter, yes, and two boys,” Ginny answered, “All away at boarding school now, though, so the house feels a little empty. No doubt your parents feel the same, with you leaving home,”

Harry noticed the way the two shared a slight glance, and the way their eyes darted around the living room once more, to reassess the Potters with this new information. While the tradition of boarding at Hogwarts was so deeply intrenched in the wizarding world, he knew it was rarer now in the muggle world. There was something archaic about it, which suited the old castle of Hogwarts, as well as the tangled complexities of class the permeated society. He knew it was not a conversation he really wanted to have, not yet, not knowing so little about them.

“Yes, you met Lily, our youngest,” he said, seeing a chance to change the conversation in a way to better tease out their reactions rather than dealing with the issue of Hogwarts, “Lily Luna. James Sirius is the oldest, and between them is Albus Severus,”

There seemed to be some kind of reaction with regards to the final name, which Harry lingered over, though it was not a reaction of recognition.

“Unusual names,” Alasdair commented, in a way that was disorientatingly neutral. Neutral was not one of the descriptors that Harry would have ever hastened to use with regards to Severus Snape.

“Do you like astronomy?” Morag asked, to the utter confusion of both Ginny and Harry. Neither of them responded immediately, so she continued, “Well, I… Luna, like the moon, and Sirius, that’s a star right? And Severus, is that a star or a constellation? I’m not that knowledgable…” she looked at Alasdair for support.

He frowned thoughtfully, saying, “I don’t know. It sounds like it could be. Sounds a bit Latin,”

“Exactly,” Morag nodded, looking uncertainly at the Potters.

“Coincidence,” Harry ended up answering, impressed with the perfectly logical but entirely incorrect conclusion they had drawn, while also disappointed at being able to detect no particular connection to either the names of Lily or Severus. Lily was the more common of the two, so if either of them was to really strike a chord it would make sense that it would be Severus, but it seemed to be nothing more than an unusual name to them.

“I’ve never encountered any astronomical body names Severus. It’s a rare name, but it was the name of one of our teachers who had a bit of an impact on our life,” Harry said after a slight pause. In a way, as far as he was concerned, much like ‘Snape’, ‘Severus’ was more of a concept than a name.

“I can’t quite think of my school teachers as having first names,” Morag admitted, to a smattering of laughter, “I mean, I know they have them but still…”

“It took me a while,” Harry agreed. He wondered if Snape had survived if he would ever have had the courage to attempt to address the man by his first name. He rather suspected that defeating Voldemort was the easier of the two options. 

Alasdair glanced at his phone, drawing Harry’s eyes to the black cover with a green snake winding round it. It seemed fitting, somehow. Ginny had noticed too, though her focus was on the gesture rather than the case. 

“We don’t want to keep you too long,” she said, which wasn’t true. Harry didn’t particularly want to let them out of his house, ever. But he knew he had to.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Morag said, “But yeah, I think we should get going…”

“No no,” Ginny smiled warmly, “Thank you for the lovely gingerbread. It was lovely to meet you. Please, come round again. Next week if you’re free. It’d be our pleasure,”

Alasdair and Morag shared uncertain looks, but they nodded. Harry felt a wave of gratitude, both for his wife and the seeming agreement that there would be future meetings. He still didn’t know what he was looking for exactly, or what he had any chance of finding, just that he needed to poke away at it, gently, but constantly. It meant that as he and Ginny watched Alasdair and Morag leave, closing the front door behind him, he felt little in the way of sorrow or frustration, but rather a growing excitement. He looked at Ginny, who was watching him carefully.

“They do seem to look like them,” she said calmly, “And they seem like perfectly nice young people. I see no harm in getting to know them a bit better,”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A burn is a stream. Fitting that note into the narrative would have been awkward, but I have also been made aware that it is not necessarily common knowledge. Sorry about that.

“We grew up round the corner from each other,” Morag said cheerfully the next week, nestled cozily in the Potter’s living room as if she belonged there, Alasdair a dark shadow beside her.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Ginny said, cradling a cup of tea. She had grown up near to Luna, and their friendship stretched back to extreme youth before either of them could remember. Harry had no such experiences, having grown up in a neighbourhood that he disliked and that disliked him back, much like the Dursleys. He was, however, capable of drawing a parallel between the two of them and the children that his mother and teacher had been together.

“It was chance that we ended up at the same university,” Alasdair interjected, perfectly friendly despite the faintly intimidating appearance. The fact that both Harry and Ginny found him to be a little ominous may well have been nothing to do with him or indeed his physical appearance, and in all fairness neither of them could describe his attitude as anything other than cordial, rather they would both admit that it was likely connected to the fact that he reminded them of Snape who had intimidated them both in a wide variety of ways many years ago.

“Lucky, then,” Ginny commented breezily. Harry knew she was still uncertain how to feel about the entire situation, caught between sensible reluctance and mischievous curiosity. 

“Known each other our whole lives, pretty much,” Morag continued, “Our mums went to the same prenatal thingy as well as us living so close. And, we were born only a week apart, so Alasdair has literally known me his whole life,”

She looked slightly proud of this last fact. Ginny, who better understood childhood dynamics regarding age due to, unlike Harry, having actually had siblings and friends, realised that this was probably a point that had held a varying degree of status over the course of their lives.

“She’s a whole week older,” Alasdair echoed quietly, in a tone that suggested he had made plenty such statements throughout both of their lives, “But somehow she’d still stoop low enough to play with me in the burn,”

“That’s lovely,” Ginny cooed as Morag made a slight face at him. She rather liked cute stories of people having entirely happy childhoods. Hers had been mostly happy, but the incident with the diary as well as the whole issue with the war had made her keen to protect childhood innocence where possible. 

“We’ve been to Scotland,” Harry said, changing the subject awkwardly. He almost winced at the slightly incredulous look Ginny shot him. It wasn’t necessarily the most intelligent statement he could have made. It was, however, true. They had both gone to school in Scotland, though Hogwarts was a distinctly isolated area and presumably not representative of the country as a whole.

“Beautiful scenery,” Harry continued, hoping that Alasdair was more forgiving of idiocy than Snape had been, “Some lovely old castles and the like,”

He could almost picture the reaction he would have received had he made such a statement in Potions or Occlumency lessons. It was almost nostalgic, though he also did quite like not having every single aspect of his intelligence insulted in what was really an exceptionally creative manner. He had often thought that he would be willing to put up with sarcastic insults in return for Snape being alive and able to tell him about his mother. In some ways it was a sign of maturity. In other ways it was a sign of his unending curiosity.

The young adults nodded their agreement, presumably used to such statements, or at the very least willing to forgive them. In some ways though, while the transition was clunky and one that Harry was slightly embarrassed by, it served a purpose. He made a mental note to work more on his conversational skills, before ploughing onwards. He had planned and prepared, artfully arranging muggle photographs on the coffee table as if he had been going through the family photograph albums, rather than all of them having been gathered for the specific purpose of giving that impression. 

Few of the photographs Harry actually owned were muggle ones, and acquiring muggle photographs was complicated by the way in which the muggle world had changed from analogue to digital while Harry wasn’t looking. He had grown up with film cameras, even if his major exposure to them had been through Colin Creevey in the distinctly magical Hogwarts, but muggle progress marched on, and so the technology changed. Everything seemed to be digital now, and while a muggle film camera worked just as well as a magical one at Hogwarts, a digital camera he knew would not. But Harry had managed to get his hands on a number of muggle photographs of Hogwarts, and those were mixed in amongst the other, irrelevant ones.

He had no doubt that to Alasdair and Morag the scattered photographs seemed almost like relics from another time, as they were clearly used to modern muggle technology judging by the way they comfortably handled their glossy iPhones with sure gestures and flicks of their fingers. In some ways it was so similar to magic, and yet at the same time the absolute antithesis. It made him wonder if it was harder for muggle born or raised children going to Hogwarts now than it had been when he had been a child. He knew that in many ways he’d been a special case, and that really he should ask Hermione. He had had very little to actually bind him to the muggle world except the Dursleys, who he was glad to be free of. But now, with smart phones and broadband, all these new concepts that were still a little foreign to him, maybe it was more of a culture shock. The muggle world was charging off into the future, constantly developing new technologies. The wizarding world seemed almost frozen in place, a time capsule of an era long gone. 

He reached a hand out, taking as if by complete random a photograph, though it was one he had intentionally procured and laid out. To his slight disappointment no one had noticed the photograph of Hogwarts that he obtained through greater lengths than he really wanted to admit to. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was expecting, and in some ways it seemed entirely pointless. An eerily accurate similarity to the long dead did not necessitate that either Alasdair or Morag would catch a glimpse of Hogwarts and immediately start talking about their time there. He knew that they hadn’t attended, aside from the obvious fact that someone would have noticed the glaring similarities long before him. Minerva, who had taught both Harry’s mother and Snape, would undoubtedly have taken note. He had, however, checked the student list for the past decade or so as a precaution. Minerva had been somewhat confused by his request, especially as he had given her no reason why he wanted to look at the names, but she had permitted him to do so anyway. A lot had happened since she had considered him to be just a disobedient student with a tendency towards wandering the hallways after curfew.

“No idea what it’s called, but it’s a lovely castle,” he said, passing the photograph of Hogwarts towards the young couple. Ginny stood to refill the tea pot, an act that could easily have waited but he suspected it was connected to her mild embarrassment at him. It was not the first time she had decided he was acting like a bit of an idiot and opted to leave the room, as she had done it multiple times before. He appreciated her support nonetheless, as she never tried to prevent him from doing what he believed to be right. He suspected that in the kitchen she was rolling her eyes at the kettle and sighing over the tea leaves.

It was Alasdair who took the photographs with elegant fingers, holding it so that Morag could also see clearly. Harry knew that it was an excellent photograph of Hogwarts, showing the castle at its best angle. It was the same sight he had seen as a first year when he’d sailed across the Lake in that little boat with Hagrid, along with all the other pupils of his year. The memory had been burnt into his brain. It had been the start of so much. 

“I don’t suppose you know what it’s called,” he continued breezily, fully expecting the answer to be negative. It did seem unlikely that he would receive the answer of Hogwarts, though he had decided to try just in case. Voldemort wasn’t defeated by him hesitating, but rather by him taking decisive action. By asking questions and investigating, even if sometimes he was wrong. He felt he had improved since then with regards to knowing when to ask questions, or at least he certainly hoped so. 

Despite his assumptions, however, Alasdair was looking at the photograph with a strange, thoughtful look on his face. Harry wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but there seemed to be a slightest hint of recognition in the lines of his face, a slight impression of a memory the taste of which was almost on the tip of his tongue but just out of reach. Morag’s attention seemed almost split, between Alasdair and the photograph, with a slightly curious glance towards Harry as well.

“Camelot?” Alasdair said, his voice so quiet that Harry wasn’t entirely certain he caught the word clearly, a whisper that seemed far more like it was intended for the young woman beside him and no one else. He had a distant look to his eyes, almost as if for a moment he was looking beyond the photograph. Harry paused, unsure of how to react, the moment of uncertain silence broken by Ginny’s return.

“It looks like the kind of castle that gets used for film sets,” Morag said cheerfully, her expression switching instantly to a casual smile as if there had never been another expression on her face. 

“Yeah,” Alasdair agreed, handing the photograph back to Harry, all the contemplation of a few moments ago vanishing in favour of a bright smile, “Like Doune Castle, which was used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We grew up near there. There’s some great castles all over the country,”

“And we always know we’re nearly back home when we see Stirling Castle looming above us,” Morag continued, sharing a smile with Alasdair.

Ginny shot Harry a curious look, knowing her husband well enough to recognise when there was something on his mind, but knowing that there was no way she could ask about it at that moment. He signalled to her with nothing more than his eyes that he’d explain later, a subtle glance that she understood in an instant.

“That sounds like a lovely area to grow up in,” Harry said, making a mental note to look up Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I grew up in Surrey,”

Both of them gave him sympathetic looks, partially based off his tone of voice that indicated a certain dissatisfaction with Surrey. He, and they, were almost certainly being unnecessarily harsh in their judgement of Surrey, but Harry had also spent the first ten or so years of his life living in a cupboard under the stairs in an incredibly bland neighbourhood, so he felt that he had a right to be dismissively rude about the entire county. There had been a reason he had chosen a place up north that was in many ways the utter antithesis of Privet Drive, though he knew that that was not the only reason. The similarities with Cokeworth, where Lily and Snape had lived as children, had also helped to draw him to the area. Ginny had been accepting of both reasons, adding in that it was a good place in general.

The conversation continued, drifting through normal everyday topics, before ending with a goodnatured promise of repeating it all the next week. Throughout it all, Harry found himself frustratedly running over their reactions to Hogwarts in his mind, something he continued all evening. Ginny left him to it, knowing through years of experience that often it was best to leave him to stew. He would tell her in good time, and if not she would prise it out of him. A part of him was annoyed at the way they had so casually dismissed Hogwarts, the way Alasdair had connected to it as if it were a fictional castle used as some kind of film set. Another part of him was bothered by the expression he had worn, the expression that kept Harry wondering if there hadn’t maybe been a hint of recognition or if it was all in his imagination. But either way, the answer preyed on his mind.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An "Otley Run" is a pub crawl, which takes place along the Otley Road.

Harry was irritable the whole week, constantly changing his opinion on how seriously he should take Alasdair’s misidentification of Hogwarts. Ginny tried her best to be patient, but patience had never really been one of her strong suits. She was kind and loving, supporting and trustworthy. But patient she was not. It was neither of their faults, so they did their best to avoid arguing with each other over small, irrelevant things. Ginny knew the cause of his annoyance, even if she felt in her heart of hearts that it was probably best for him to give up any hope of connecting the students next door to the dead. Harry knew that Ginny just cared for him, and that she was being far more supportive of his irrational behaviour than many others would be.

It was probably a part of the reason why, when Alasdair and Morag came round again for tea and a chat, Ginny was the one who took the lead in the conversation. She wanted to protect Harry, even if the one she was protecting him from was himself. Harry was not properly in the right frame of mind for talking to other people. Everyone in the Auror department had noticed his tetchy mood, and had wisely said nothing about it, merely going about their jobs in the manner least likely to further irritate him. It didn’t help that it was the week of Halloween, when he was always on edge and prone to melancholy. He had more thoughts than usual, his mother seemingly brought to life in front of his very eyes, living a normal muggle life in the house next door to his. He had questions that only raised more questions, with no real hope for answers. 

“Any plans for Halloween?” she asked breezily, preferring to focus on the normal day to day aspects of life that the students would likely be experiencing. Halloween was always a tough time for Harry, and Ginny found it discomforting as a result, but for muggles it was just a normal day. For muggle students it tended to be an excuse to dress up in ridiculous costumes and go out drinking. She had no doubt that Morag and Alasdair would have no mystical connections to Halloween. Harry’s mother Lily had been murdered on the date many years before, but while Morag might look identical for whatever reason Ginny couldn’t see her as having any particular connection to it.

“Just going out later on tonight with a few friends, nothing wild,” Morag answered with a smile, a slight blush tinging her cheeks. 

“Do you have costumes planned or…?” Ginny asked, nibbling at a ginger nut. She quite liked having students round as with all their children at Hogwarts their house did seem a little empty with just the two of them. There were advantages, and they were both out a reasonable amount with their respective jobs, but meeting new people so very different to the kinds they normally encountered did fascinate her. She may not have inherited her father’s slightly embarrassing excitement over anything muggle, but she did find them to be interesting. 

“We’re going as Amy Pond and her Doctor,” Morag said, “Nothing fancy, just relatively easy costumes but still fun,”

Ginny nodded, as if she knew what they were talking about. She was vaguely aware of Doctor Who, but that didn’t mean she had seen it enough to have much confidence with the characters beyond a suspicion that they were referring to people from the show. She also had a general awareness that most muggles did tend to know a little more than her about such subjects and that revealing her ignorance might lead to questions about her hobbies and interests that she did not want to have to answer as she couldn’t tell them the truth, which was Quidditch. 

“I still don’t see why I couldn’t be Rory,” Alasdair protested in a way that suggested this discussion had gone on for a reasonable length of time, though with a lot of good humour, “I’ve got the nose for it and everything,”

Ginny nearly choked on her biscuit as she started laughing, unable to explain entirely why she was so amused. It was probably in part the way Alasdair had defiantly gestured towards his nose, as well as the resemblance to Snape who she could never imagine saying anything of the sort. Having been slightly on edge all week with Harry’s uneven temper had probably made her more alert to any sudden emotions, leading to an inexplicable explosion of mirth. The fact that everyone else in the room turned to look at her with surprised expressions only made her laugh harder, though she gestured her apologies to them.

“Sorry,” she wheezed, dabbing at her eyes where a few tears had crept out, “Sorry,”

“The Doctor’s more iconic,” Morag muttered to Alasdair with a sigh, “You just want to get out of dressing up properly,”

Alasdair nodded, not bothering to refute her claim. He didn’t seem to Ginny to be the type to vary his wardrobe much, given that she had yet to see him wear a colour that wasn’t black. She wasn’t sure how she would feel were he to vary his colour palate at all, as she imagined that it would be surreal to witness someone so identical to Snape who had been so very much connected to the colour black in all their minds. 

“Don’t like dressing up?” Ginny asked, getting herself back under control enough to speak.

“Not really that into it,” Alasdair admitted, making Harry frown. He was certain he had seen Alasdair the Halloween before, very much dressed up in an outrageous costume.

“He let me dress him up as Dr Frank-N-Furter last year,” Morag said, a nostalgic smile playing around her lips, “It was great, but everyone hit on him, which was less great. Made me realise I fancied him though, so I guess that was good,”

“We did an Otley Run last year with a massive group of people, all in costume,” Alasdair said, as if defending his decision to dress up properly the year before.

“I was Wonder Woman,” Morag continued, “And it was a lot of fun, but this year we’re going to be more low key. We aren’t first years anymore, so it’s not quite as exciting I guess? Plus, if you aren’t getting properly drunk it can be a bit cold in skimpy outfits like we wore last year. There’s loads of pictures up on Facebook from last year though,”

Ginny nodded her understanding, even though she really didn’t quite understand. She was, however, good enough with social cues to know how to react.

“So you’ve not been dating all that long then,” she asked, relationships being a topic she felt infinitely more confident talking about compared to muggle pop culture. 

“Not really,” Morag shrugged, “We were friends for ages and used to get annoyed at all them people who didn’t think boys and girls could be friends. We still are friends, just also a bit more,” she blushed again, fidgeting slightly.

“I know what you mean,” Ginny sighed, “Harry and I were friends at school, and my brother and his wife were good friends for quite a while before they obviously went on to get married. I think it’s sweet,”

“Shame really,” Alasdair said, getting a wounded look from Morag.

“You know what I mean,” he protested, making her smile. Morag struck Ginny as being quite a smiley person in general. 

“Yeah,” she said, “Luckily I do. I’ve known you long enough that we can practically read each other’s minds,”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing your Halloween costumes,” Harry said, breaking in on the conversation he had silently been listening to, “Maybe we should be friends on Facebook?”

It wasn’t strictly speaking true, as he had little interest in what they chose to dress up as in their spare time. He had also caught a glimpse of them in their costumes the year before, though a chance to show Ginny the full glory of the impressive sluttiness of their costumes did definitely appeal to him. More importantly he could see that Facebook might be a nice way to keep a track of them in a muggle way that was practically socially acceptable stalking. 

Alasdair and Morag shared a slight glance then nodded. Harry and Ginny were after all well within the age range of people who could well be expected to use Facebook. They did both have accounts, though they didn’t use them much due to being a witch and wizard who spent most of their time in the wizarding world. Maybe had they had muggle jobs they might have done as plenty of muggles did and trawled social media from their desks, counting down the hours until they could go home, but computers and smart phones didn’t work in the Ministry nor were they practical for Quidditch reporting.

As the two students had smartphones at their fingertips as well as far more confidence with technology, it was they who searched for first Harry Potter and then Ginny Potter to send friend requests, which Harry and Ginny knew they would have to respond to on their not particularly impressive computer.

“I’ve been thinking of getting a smart phone,” Harry said out of the blue as he watched elegant fingers tap away at the small screens. He hadn’t actually thought about it at all, but once he’d said so his mind was full of reasons why it might be a fantastic idea. Ginny stared at him in shock. She was clearly aware that he would not be able to take it with him to the Ministry, and that he would have a lot less use for it than a muggle might. But Harry was already giving in to temptation, fantasising about how much easier it would be to watch Alasdair and Morag through apps on a phone as well as the short, weekly meetings.

Later that night, after Harry and Ginny had both spent far longer than they wanted to admit trying to remember their Facebook passwords, Harry found himself unable to sleep. It had been over a year since he had been jolted out of his sense of normalcy when he had seen Alasdair looking for all the world like a young Severus Snape wandering around Leeds, vibrantly alive and disorientatingly muggle. It was the weekend around Halloween, when there would be fun parties celebrating the macabre. Harry knew that at one of them there would be a young man looking like Severus Snape, accompanied by a young woman looking like his mother. The thought kept him up, disturbed by the idea of Morag being out partying when it had been Halloween his mother had been murdered. It was a strange feeling, a crawling sensation up his spine as he failed to be able to fully separate the two women from each other within the recesses of his mind.

He sat on their window ledge, looking out the window onto the street below, as Ginny slept. His thoughts ran through the ever increasing questions, searching for answers but finding nothing but new questions. The streetlights bathed the scene before him in light, so the clouds covering the moon made no difference to his view. Occasionally costumed students would pass by, but he paid them little attention. He hadn’t even intended to say up watching for Alasdair and Morag’s return, and felt a twinge of guilt when he noticed them making their way up to their front door, arm in arm. From his google search earlier in the evening, he recognised Amy Pond leaning her head against the Doctor, his bowtie skew-whiff as he unlocked their front door.


	9. Chapter 9

Inconsequential chitchat and the mundanity of Facebook had led Harry to a conclusion he knew he would eventually arrive at. Theoretically techniques like Legimancy were to be used responsibly, powers that should be used sparingly. He had however been greatly influenced by Dumbledore, who he knew had read minds as he saw fit, as well as the eternal suspicion that Snape had causally used Legimancy for all sorts of reasons long before Harry had ever known about its existence. 

For all their flaws, they had both been men who taught him a significant amount of what he knew of the world, as shown by his choice to name his youngest son after them. As an Auror, with a great amount of responsibility and the reputation of the entire department to uphold, he should not use Legimancy to probe around in the minds of random muggles to satisfy his personal curiosity. As the saviour of the wizarding world who had learnt from two Headmasters of Hogwarts that in many ways it was easiest to just do as you felt like and damn the consequences, especially seeing as consequences were easy to avoid once you had achieved enough power and respect, Harry felt it perfectly logical that he would turn to Legimancy. 

The one trick he had learnt from both Dumbledore and Snape was to not be open about the fact that he was intending to casually abuse his powers, making his decision midway through some particularly boring paperwork at the Ministry. He hated paperwork and the way it distracted him from actually doing the part of the job he had become an Auror to do. He knew that paperwork was important, at least theoretically. Hermione seemed a lot more keen on it than he was, but unfortunately unlike homework he couldn’t just leave it all to her. It was one of the greatest disappointments of growing up. He still had to answer inane questions for no reason he could discern, only now copying from a cleverer and more motivated friend was no longer an option. He had always assumed being an Auror would be more of the interesting, dramatic, brave things he had done to defeat Voldemort and less of the essays his professors at Hogwarts had always wanted him to write.

In some ways it was a resolution. If he could find nothing unusual in either Alasdair or Morag’s minds, then he might be able to lay his curiosity to rest. It would still leave him wondering, but at least he would have an answer of sorts, even if it was not a satisfying one. But if there was something odd, something to connect them to the wizarding world or the dead, then he felt like his use of Legimancy would be perfectly justified. He couldn’t know until he tried. He knew no one would notice, there was no one to monitor what he was doing within the privacy of his own home.

Legimancy he felt more comfortable performing than Occlumency, which had never really suited him. He preferred attacking and asking questions than hiding away or erecting defences. He wondered if maybe growing up hidden away under the stairs of 4 Privet Drive had been a part of the reason why, though at the end of the day it didn’t matter. He liked to be free with his thoughts and feelings as much as he could. He took pleasure in being able to live as he saw fit now that he was away from his childhood with the Dursleys and the spectre of Voldemort that had loomed over much of his life.

As Alasdair, Morag and Ginny chattered away cheerfully, their conversation deeply rooted in the present, an exploration of the mundanity of daily life, Harry subtly shifted to be able to cast his spell without drawing any attention to himself. Ginny gave him a slight frown, years of knowing him intimately having gifted her with an almost supernatural sense to detect when he was planning something that might be commonly disapproved of, though she made no efforts to interfere or stop him.

He had put a lot of thought into which of the two he should try to read the mind of first. He should have been spending the time and his mental energies focusing on paperwork, but it rarely managed to hold his attention for long. It had taken him even longer than usual, his mind elsewhere to a greater extent than it normally was. He felt that realistically it was most logical to read the minds of both of them, just in case, and possibly more than once to be careful. This was an attitude towards checking he had picked up from the need for duplicates that came up in the bureaucratic process as well as Hermione’s ongoing encouragement towards being careful and accurate. It was probably not the conclusion he should have drawn, but it was what it was. He had decided to start with Alasdair because he felt that he would have a greater chance of recognising anything Snape-like in his mind, a fact that made him sad. Snape had lived longer than his mother, and he had actual memories of him. The only memory of his mother he had ever had was Voldemort’s memory of killing her. After that realisation he had spent a whole evening sadly flicking through his photo albums, looking at her smiling young face. Ginny had sat beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, comfort seeming through their points of contact.

Green eyes met black ones as a shudder went through Harry, memories of a time he had stared into black eyes as Snape lay dying on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. It nearly jettisoned the whole spell as he almost retreated back into the memories within his own mind, sparked off by the eerie resemblance. But he managed to hold himself together enough to find himself pushing his way into Alasdair’s seemingly unprotected mind. Snape’s mind had never truly been unprotected, an impressive display of Occlumency that Harry had never appreciated at the time. It was later, talking to Dumbledore’s portrait, that he found out that it had been something Snape had been naturally talented at, an impressive gift that made him able to learn both Occlumency and Legimancy quickly and with apparent ease. Harry had uncharitably wondered if a natural ability for it had meant he had been unable to comprehend the difficulties it posed for everyone else and therefore made him such a bad teacher, or if it was the combination of personalities that had meant everything the two of them had done together had ended in bad temper and deepening dislike. With Snape’s portrait forever still and lifeless, there was no way of knowing, though Harry also did not fancy his chances of extracting the information had he been in a position to ask.

The living room of the house faded, comfortable sofas hosting friendly conversations blurring as Harry pushed his way into Alasdair’s mind. The first thing he saw was a bedroom, in a room that suggested it was in a house not dissimilar to his own, though the room was decorated differently, furniture slightly tatty and slightly ominous looking posters covering the walls. On the unmade bed sat Alasdair, his arms wrapped around Morag, pulling her into a kiss. To Harry’s relief they were both dressed, though he got the impression that would’t last long. He nearly withdrew from his mind, but determination kept him strong. As the kiss deepened, fingers tangling in hair, Harry tried to seek out earlier memories, memories of the distant past. His rudimentary Legimancy was not a particularly fine tool, but it did the job. 

The couple faded, switching to a new scene of green hills as far as the eye could see. Lying on the grass were two young children, heads close enough together that long red hair mixed with shorter black against the green underneath them. It was a scene that could have been of the children Lily and Severus had been, their positions and proximity something that could have come from Snape’s memories that Harry had safe in his vial upstairs, but they were wearing clothes too modern to be anyone other than Alasdair and Morag as children. He felt a slight wave of irritation at the similarity that gave him no proof of anything except the similarity he had already noticed, a redundant repetition, an annoyance that was an unfair reaction to the two young children, happily smiling as they pointed out clouds to each other, two friends without a care in the world as Lily and Severus no doubt had once been.

He pushed, more aggressively searching for something to connect Alasdair to magic or Snape, as the children faded away. The scene he found himself viewing nearly made his heart stop, confusion and vindication fighting inside himself. Before his eyes was a simple stone room, looking like a tower room that could have been in a castle like Hogwarts. In the middle of it was a plain desk, at which sat an old man. He had long hair and a long beard, both deep grey. His face was lined and his nose a prominent hook that seemed familiar to Harry. He was writing something in a book, his quill scratching away confidently. He wore simple dark robes, which looked to be both comfortable and warm, though old fashioned even for wizarding clothes.

By the window, looking out in a way that confirmed Harry’s suspicion that it was a room in a tower of a castle stood a woman. She too was old, her face lined and her hair grey, though her eyes were still a vivid emerald green. Her long hair was braided, carefully wrapped up on her head in a complicated plait. She wore an elegant, deep blue robe, cut to flatter. It was of a richer design than the man’s, though still practical, and even more clearly dated. The man raised his eyes from his writing as she turned her thoughtful gaze inwards towards him. As black eyes met green ones, they both seemed to share an amused smile, the creases of old age not hiding the raw power that lurked in their physical beings.

A wall of obsidian black slammed down on Harry’s consciousness, throwing him from Alasdair’s mind with an intensity he had never before felt. The closest he had ever before been had been when Snape had thrown him from his mind in the disastrous Occulmency lessons, though those had been more gentle, a word he had never thought he would use to describe those experiences. He found himself rudely dropped back into his own body, blinking as the scene in front of him return sharply to being his own living room, with his wife and the two students from next door sharing a friendly cup of tea. Alasdair winced slightly, putting his hand to his temple as if experiencing a fleeting moment of pain, but it seemed to pass quickly. Morag gave him a questioning look which he brushed off with little concern as he returned to his normal expression under Harry’s confused gaze.

It took all of Harry’s self control to keep his reaction unexpressed, blinking at the them in confusion. As far as he could tell, Alasdair was entirely unaware that he had read his mind. But as far as he knew, there was no reason why he should have seen an old man and woman that to him looked like older versions of Alasdair and Morag, or indeed Snape and his mother. Neither of them had lived to be old, anyway. All he knew, as he tried to pretend everything was normal and take part in the conversation as best he could, was that he would have to investigate more. Legimancy was the way forward.


	10. Chapter 10

Hogwarts seemed to have barely changed at all in the time since Harry had left it. There was something ageless and timeless about the castle itself, and yet as he stood in the empty corridors he found himself noticing small details that seemed to be different in his memories. He wondered, had they changed or had he just forgotten, either so possible that he couldn’t tell. The Headmistress’s Office had changed, no longer the room Harry had known when it belonged to Dumbledore and altered too from the design Snape had used during his brief spell as Headmaster, though that Harry had paid little attention to. He found himself caught up again in the magic of Hogwarts, for a moment feeling a sharp pang of regret course through him, regret that he hadn’t done as Hermoine had and returned for a final year.

It wouldn’t have been the same though, he acknowledged that to himself. In a way, when Snape had killed Dumbledore in front of his eyes, when Hogwarts had become the final battleground in the war against Voldemort, the magic he had associated with the old castle had died. It had survived all the darkness he had experienced there, but those final points had changed it from a haven to which he had been brought, swept away from the miserable childhood with the Dursleys to a happy life full of magic, to what it really was. A place. A beautiful, magical, wonderful castle, but still it was no more than a location. He had found himself, found his power and his magic. All of that lay within him, and he took it wherever he went, was no longer reliant on the association with Common Rooms and House Points.

There was a part of him that wanted to leave Hogwarts, the school he had gone to, in his memories. He wanted to know only Dumbledore as Headmaster, a connection that had been burnt so strongly into him that even though so many years had passed he still had yet to truly adjust to the idea of McGonagall being the Headmistress, despite the fact that she had been Headmistress for longer now than he had ever experienced Dumbledore being Headmaster. Ginny had been to school under them both, as well as the year between their tenures, when darkness covered the whole castle, held at bay by Snape though no one had realised it until he had died.

McGonagall had asked no questions when he had asked to be allowed to have a wander around the castle, simply requesting that he didn’t disturb any of the classes. One of the advantages of being Harry Potter, he assumed, able to come and go as he pleased with a far greater degree of leniency than another might expect. He moved quietly through the corridors, away from the classrooms, exploring the unused rooms that made up so much of the castle. He wondered, as he had never really thought to as a child, at how vast it was. A full-sized, sprawling castle with grounds that spread out from it, dwarfing the whole village of Hogsmeade.

A part of him wanted to search out his children, to grab them and hold them close in loving hugs. Lily he thought at least might still be receptive to the outpouring of love her father wanted to shower her with, though even she might be embarrassed at such a display, pushing him away as she blushed bright red. James and Albus he imagined would not appreciate it in the slightest, avoiding him and complaining about embarrassing them in front of their friends. He remembered what it was like to be Harry Potter at school. He imagined that being the children of Harry Potter would have similar complications. He didn’t want to make it harder, and he had promised McGonagall to cause no disruptions. It was a request he had to admit she had every right to ask of him, as he had for so many years brought a wave of chaos in his wake. It had always been unintentional, but he had become better at noticing the potential for disaster and unintended consequences as he grew up.

So he walked through the deserted parts of the corridors like a ghost, a ghost of his own past wandering through rooms that hadn’t been used for he imagined centuries. He opened doors, peering in and comparing the contents to his memory, the memory he had seen in Alasdair’s mind. It seemed like the best place to start, the only place really. It was the only castle he knew, the only castle connected to magic that he could think of that actually existed. The others, like Camelot, were just legends, the locations of which were unknown if they had ever even existed. A part of him expected to open a door and find a room identical to the one he had seen, a part of him wondered if that wasn’t too unlikely. Either way, it didn’t change the facts that he still had no idea why such a memory might have existed in Alasdair’s mind.

Young children playing in a castle, a young Lily and Severus at Hogwarts, those memories would have raised all kind of questions but the old man and the old woman couldn’t have been Alasdair and Morag, still young seemingly normal muggles, and yet at the same time they couldn’t have been Lily or Severus as neither of them had lived to be anything close to old. He’d looked at his memory of reading Alasdair’s mind, to check to be absolutely certain that it was definitely a memory, but there was nothing he could find to suggest it was anything other than a genuine memory, floating around in a head it had no place being in.

As he gazed upon yet another room, somehow similar but not quite the same as the one he was hopelessly, fruitlessly searching for, he found himself wondering about the Founders. Why, he wondered, had they built such a massive castle for such a small number of students. There were far more rooms than there could possibly be classes to fill them, vast sections left utterly unused. Whole areas that had probably not seen a human pass through in years, the only action they had likely witnessed that century being during the battle when everyone had spread out through the castle to hide and hunt, aware of enemies being around every corner.

He looked out of one of the windows and considered, had the Founders physically built Hogwarts themselves, he wondered. Or had they decided that the castle was the best place in which to found the school. It was a strangely ambiguous word, now that he thought of it. Founder. They had founded Hogwarts, but did that mean that they had founded the castle, built it themselves from the foundations up, or had they founded the school, crafting the education system that he himself had passed through, placing it in a castle that suited their needs. Or maybe, they had literally found the castle and decided to found a school in it, a silly thought that drifted through his mind and nearly made him snort with faint amusement at the way in which he was clearly tying his thoughts in knots. 

He had always assumed that they had built it, mainly because of the Chamber of Secrets, but now that he was older he no longer saw that as being proof of that conclusion. After all, the plumbing system had been added in later, so there was no reason why Slytherin hadn’t simply altered an existing castle to add in parts. Maybe they all had, tweaking a normal muggle castle to be a magical school. It seemed like a lot less effort than building an entire castle, especially given the discrepancy between the size of it and the size of the student body. It was something Harry realised he would have to ask either Hermione or McGonagall.

It was when he had decided that he was chasing a ghost, a futile attempt that was merely a waste of time, that he found the room that he had seen in Alasdair’s mind. It looked different without the furniture, but Harry was certain that it was the same. The dimensions seemed to match perfectly, and he could almost see in his mind’s eye the desk the old man had sat at, the bookcases that had covered one of the walls. He walked over to the window, standing where the old woman had stood, looking out over the lake as he imagined her green eyes once had. The sunlight glinted off the lake, the Giant Squid just visible beneath the water. He felt a moment of confusion warring with certainty. It was the same room, a room that a young muggle man remembered though Harry was sure that he had never been there to see it with his own eyes. 

He might have lost himself in thoughts, wondering away the rest of the day, had not a familiar cat padded its way into the room. It took up position in the middle of the floor, sitting and watching him silently, tail swishing up dust. Harry smiled at it, amused in a way. He was glad to have company, someone to shake him out of his rambling thoughts. He felt suddenly aware that it had been too long since he spoke to McGonagall, now no longer his stern teacher but his friend Minerva. The cat switched seamlessly into a woman who was now starting to show the signs of age, though in many ways she had not changed, hair still in the neat bun she had always worn when she taught him all those years ago, robes still tending towards austere. In that manner she and Snape had been cut from the same cloth, preferring sensible and plain clothing, obedient classes and loyal Houses. Dumbledore had been the exception, brightly dressed and vocal, just like Lockhart had been, only with the actual talent and accolades to back it up.

“Trip down memory lane?” Minerva asked, her voice the same as it always had been, though softer now that she no longer needed to scold him as she once had been required to do so very often. He had been a disobedient student, he realised that now he was an adult.

“Just… something that was bothering me…” Harry replied, an answer that answered nothing, but Minerva was no longer his teacher. She let it go, no longer needing to push him for answers, to figure out what rules he had broken or was planning to break. For a moment they stood in silence, contemplating the empty room, the dust showing the footprints of a man and the paw prints of a cat, trails that ended with a man and a woman, an Auror and a Headteacher.

“Why did the Founders build Hogwarts so big?” he asked suddenly, breaking the silence, “Why did the castle have to be so vast, when so many rooms are just left empty?”

Minerva tilted her head, as if considering the questions before answering, “No one really knows. There are very few actual paper records from the time of the Founders, what little we have that we know of them tends to be documents written long after their deaths. But it is possible that…”

She paused, sighing heavily, “It’s possible that there were simply more students when they ran Hogwarts. The records that do exist seem to suggest that there has been a slow and subtle decline in the numbers of students attending Hogwarts…”

Harry frowned at her, uncertain, “Why?” he asked, “Why would the number of magical children be declining?”

Minerva shrugged, “Lower birthrates in Britain would account for it, and better contraception presumably decreases at least the muggle born and halfblood students that might otherwise be born, theoretically. A number of the pureblood families have simply died out, failing to produce heirs. The Princes and the Gaunts, as we both know, are lines that ended. But it’s not a question or an issue that people like to talk about, not now that we have finally put the whole spectre of Voldemort to rest,”

Harry paused, before saying slowly, “Some people wondered if it was caused by interbreeding with muggles?”

Minvera nodded, “It was a theory mentioned when the numbers were noticed to be declining, well over a century ago. Now I imagine people just assume it to be the same as the muggle population, less children being born as people live longer lives…”


	11. Chapter 11

What Harry really wanted to do was to storm into the house next door, hold Alasdair and Morag down and read their minds thoroughly, each in turn. Seeing as he was well aware that this was something that would be unlikely to be overlooked by the Ministry, would presumably end the sort of friendship he and Ginny were developing with them and generally irritate his wife, he chose not to do so. It didn’t mean he didn’t think of it, though. A part of growing up had included him developing that sort of self restraint. He was a father now, a husband and an Auror. In many ways, that was the order in which he considered his life, though sometimes he worried that he was really only truly talented at the world-saving thing he had done as a teenager. Being a father was far more complex than he had ever imagined, especially seeing as he had precious little examples in his life to follow. 

His real father had died long before he had ever had a chance to know him. He had no idea what kind of father James would have been, and how being raised by him would have affected the person Harry was. He loved his father, but he also knew that the man hadn’t been perfect. As a teenager he had been a bully, though he had also grown up into something better. Sirius had been incarcerated rather than being able to fulfil his duty as a godfather, and while that brief moment when Harry believed he might be able to finally live with someone who loved him had been one of the happiest of his early life, it had not lasted. Just as Peter Pettigrew had ensured that Harry would not be raised by Sirius, he had once again ensured that Sirius would remain a fugitive rather than the guardian he should have been. The fact that Harry now knew all about the blood ward that would have prevented that happy situation regardless did nothing to change the sense of loss that still lingered. Two men who should have been there in his youth, who circumstance had torn from him. Instead he had been left with Uncle Vernon, who had acted mostly as an example of what not to be, both in the way he had treated Harry and also in the way that he had treated his own son. Being a husband likewise was fulfilling but sometimes he would wonder if he didn’t sometimes take his wife for granted. And being an Auror involved far too much bureaucracy for his liking, as if he was still chained to the frustration of homework that had always stood between him and protecting the world. 

He was turning over the issue in his mind, constantly, which was resulting in all of his paperwork taking longer than it should have due to moments of staring into space thinking up increasingly unlikely theories. He was now certain that the memory he had seen was of an older version of the two of them in a room of Hogwarts, though rather than answering any questions it had merely raised more. That memory clearly did not belong to Alasdair, as he had presumably never gone to Hogwarts, and also was still only around the age of twenty. It also couldn’t belong to Severus Snape, as while he had gone to Hogwarts he had died at the age of thirty-eight. When Harry had been a child, he had thought that to be incredibly old, though not as old as Dumbledore who was simply ancient, but after he had reached a comparable age himself he had reassessed his opinion. The woman in the memory likewise couldn’t actually be either Morag or his mother for similar reasons, but that just left the question as to who she was. The only thing he knew for certain was that they couldn’t be students, given their age, so he was wondering if they might be teachers of some kind, though he also wasn’t certain about that theory. There was something about the way they had been in the room that had not made him think of teachers.

Now he had even more reason to wish to read Alasdair’s mind more, to search deep within it for more memories of the old man that seemed from the memory Harry had seen that clearly seemed to be from the point of view of Alasdair, though it logically simply wasn’t possible. He still wanted to probe to see if hidden amongst that was a trace of what might connect him to Severus Snape, unable to believe now for certain that the uncanny resemblance was a mere fluke. But he also wanted to plunge into Morag’s mind, to see if he could find memories in her mind that would be like Alasdair, the normal ones he might expect of a normal muggle woman mixed up with memories that made no sense. Memories that clearly belonged to someone else and yet seemed to fit her perfectly. He suspected that rather than answers, he was more likely to find more questions, but now that he was truly captivated by the mystery he knew there was no chance of him stopping his relentless pursuit of the answers that surely must lay that the end of his investigation.

Luckily, it was still term time, though not for much longer. He knew that soon they would presumably leave to return to their families and his attention would be taken up by his own children, returning home full of tales of Hogwarts. He was looking forward to holding them, but also determined to not let his last opportunity of reading their minds pass by, as it would be a few weeks until he next had an opportunity. In some ways, that might also be a good thing. He knew that he would have an opportunity for talking to Hermione, at least, and that just like when he had been a teenager he would always appreciate her input on any problem he was faced with. No matter what, she always seemed to know more, to have read all the relevant books. 

“We’ll be going home for Christmas,” Alasdair was saying cheerfully, comfortable sitting in Harry’s sofa in a way that Harry could not imagine Severus Snape ever being, “Not that it’ll be particularly restful what with the deadlines and exams in January, but I’m looking forward to seen Callum.”

Callum, Harry knew, was his younger brother, who seemed to be the reason why Alasdair had been so good with Lily when the two encountered each other in the park. While Morag’s lock screen was a candid photograph of Alasdair studying, Alasdair’s was of his considerably younger brother. 

“We’re looking forward to having our kids back too,” Ginny admitted with a large grin. She was well aware that Harry was distracted, and also that while he was busy playing about with magic it was necessary for her to ensure that the poor students didn’t notice what her husband was doing.

“I can imagine,” Morag said, “I know that I used to rebel against my parents a lot as a teenager, but I can’t quite imagine having gone away to boarding school.”

Gently, surreptitiously, and full of burning curiosity, Harry performed Legimancy on Morag. He pushed firmly into her mind, just as he would with any other muggle. The memories that presented themselves to him were that of a normal muggle, a young student going about her general life. Flashes of memories that Harry ignored, pushing them aside. He wanted to see if there was something else behind those memories. Something further back than she should have been able to remember. Something magical, something mysterious. He wondered if he would see the old man and old woman he had seen in Alasdair’s mind, who looked like dead ringers for both the young couple who had entered his life so abruptly and also the long-dead Severus and Lily. Maybe there would be nothing unusual, but Harry found that hard to believe. So he flicked through normal memories that seemed to show nothing that he was searching for, hoping for something that would stand out as impossible.

He found himself caught in a scene, that instantly he recognised as unlikely to belong to a young muggle in the modern world. A woman with dark red hair, identical to the woman physically in front of Harry, was crouching beside a road. Her dark green kirtle was hitched high up above her knees for better movement, and she was watching as a stream of horses passed by, unseen by those on the road. Both the clothing and the use of horses seemed to be something that belonged to another age, though just as easily muggle as magical. They seemed to be moving in some kind of order, black horses giving way to a series of brown ones, each one of them bearing a rider. Bringing up the rear, Harry could see that there was a white horse approaching. 

The woman who couldn’t possibly be Morag and couldn’t possibly be Lily but also couldn’t possibly be anything other than connected to them both somehow tensed up as he came nearer. Once the horse and its rider were directly in front of her, she made her move, rushing forward and dragging him down on top of her, the two of them collapsing into a heap on the ground. The man didn’t seem to have resisted her, allowing himself to be dismounted. Harry had been distracted by the woman who wasn’t Morag, but now that he looked at the man who had been on the horse he saw the familiar face, sporting a hooked nose and surrounded by dark hair.

The woman who wasn’t Morag held onto the man who wasn’t Alasdair tightly, as if she would never let him go. Her mantel was wrapped protectively round the both of them, as if shielding him from something. Harry thought for a moment they might be waiting for something, and then he saw the shape of the man change from beneath the heavy fabric, to something resembling almost a snake, or possibly a newt. And then, when Harry was watching in fascination, wondering at the scene before his eyes, it changed sharply. The suddenness disorientated him for a moment, then he realised with a start that he was back in the room of Hogwarts that he had seen in Alasdair’s mind. It was identical, the scene exactly the same as the one he had seen before and the room the same as the room he had seen for himself at Hogwarts, thought now that room was abandoned and unused. The old man raised his eyes from his writing to meet the amused glance of the old woman, just as he had seen in his previous attempt, the memory the same, like a brief snippet repeating itself.

The same obsidian wall slammed down on him, kicking him from Morag’s mind and back into the present. Just as Alasdair had done, Morag put her hand to her temples with a slight wince, as if experiencing a fleeting sensation of pain, but her bright smile returned in an instant. Harry felt confused but at the same time certain that she had no idea that he had just read her mind. He had no further idea of how the old couple tied in with the couple before him, but now he had another set of people to add to the collection. He felt sure that the man on the horse and the woman who had pulled him from it where different incarnations rather than younger versions of the old couple or the couple before him dressed up for whatever reason. But it answered no questions, rather it just raised more.


End file.
